


You are not doomed

by futureplans



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, post 3x05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24147004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futureplans/pseuds/futureplans
Summary: Sometimes you go all the way to Russia to find your family only to realize that home is with an idiot with amazing hair who keeps getting herself into trouble and should really invest in better locks for her apartment.Sometimes you go all the way to Poland to find your family only to realize that home is with a homicidal asshole who corners you in buses and breaks into your not-quite-friend's flat in the middle of the night because of course she did.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 37
Kudos: 292





	You are not doomed

The apartment is dark and silent when Eve returns. She puts down her bag with a sigh, glad that she is alone. She should probably want company, empathy, comfort, but more than anything she feels tired. Untethered. Numb. Niko is dead and it feels like a constant punch to the gut, but it also feels like a joke. Like something that happened to somebody else's life.

She doesn't flip the light switch, finding the darkness soothing. She walks with one hand on the wall, fingers brushing over the uneven surface, toes digging into the carpet underfoot. The sensations ground her, something to focus on. 

Her hand hovers in the air, for a second, as she passes the door to the living room. She walks on, towards the bedroom at the end of the corridor, then stops. Retraces her steps. Pauses by the door, wide open, revealing a sofa and armchair draped in shadows. 

Lying in the sofa, completely immobile and facing away from the door, is a familiar figure. Eve can't tell whether she's asleep or just waiting, but stillness makes her look... small. Fragile. It's always unexpected, to see Villanelle look human-sized. Whenever she moves, she seems to make herself 10 feet tall with cockiness and bravado.

Eve retreats towards the entrance, angling herself towards the kitchen. She can't make too much noise rummaging through drawers, but maybe there is a nice sharp knife lying out in the open and she can-

“You're going to be scared?” Eve freezes in place, and finally her heart remembers that it's supposed to be hammering, pumping adrenaline through her system, helping her get away. Villanelle is still motionless on the sofa, but Eve sees her outline sigh. “Okay, go ahead and get it out of your system. I will wait.”

Will she? Could Eve walk out of that door and not be followed? 

She supposes she'll never know, because she steps into the living room and fixes Villanelle with her best displeased glare, and is that really the emotion she should be feeling right now? 

Maybe it's the general numbness. Maybe Niko has taken up all the strong feelings, hoarded them to carefully prepare and grow the wave of grief that is sure to come down any second now. And until it does, all Eve is left with are little things, like annoyance at the murderer in her home. 

“You shot me,” she points out eventually. Surely that's a valid reason to be scared, to scramble for something sharp to keep Villanelle at bay. Not that she really... scrambled.

“You kissed me,” Villanelle replies with a one-shoulder shrug. She's still facing the wall, gazing into nothing. The room is still dark, but when Eve reaches for the light, it feels off. Like they're supposed to sit in the darkness. To have all the lines of their face half-hidden from sight, to have some cover from reality.

Villanelle's voice is oddly even. Eve isn't used to it. She's heard screaming and laughing, she's heard amused and angry and smug and flirtatious. Sometimes more than one at the same time. Sometimes all of them at the same time.

Now her voice is flat. And it's weird. Villanelle is acting weird.

“Are you okay?”

Is the psychopath okay? Eve has just travelled to Poland to watch her husband die, murdered by some new assassin, one that has a vested interest in framing Villanelle – so in a way he died because of her, of course. But he also died because of Eve, so who is she to point fingers? 

She has just traveled to Poland, and then back, and she sat on the plane and remembered the last time she'd boarded a flight with blood on her hands, and she kept waiting for it to hit her. For the tears to fall, to tear her apart, to leave her heaving and howling. And all she got was this numbness, this emptiness, and she spent her whole ride home wondering if maybe she really does have nothing inside her, can't even mourn her husband properly because she's run out of feelings, wasted them all on tiny insignificant things.

Sure, she's just done all that, but is the psychopath okay?

What the fuck is wrong with her?

“Am I okay?” This time, Villanelle does turn, just enough to face her, and in the darkness Eve can see her lips tilt into a smirk. The familiar sight soothes her, somehow. “You have very strange instincts, Eve.”

It's annoying that Villanelle is thinking the same as her. It should be worrying, maybe, but it just feels annoying.

Numbness and all that.

“Well, isn't that why you came here? You don't really look... manic enough to have something planned.”

“I am  _ not _ manic,” Villanelle scoffs, looking genuinely offended. “Ever. I am a very composed person.”

Eve laughs. She makes sure to keep it to a small chuckle, to cut herself off before it can grow and take her over and send her over the edge, into ugly tears and sobs and-

It doesn't take her over. She chuckles. She sits down. “Why did you come here, Villanelle?”

She looks away. It's so fragile, so unlike her, that Eve almost reaches out. Almost brushes her cheek, lets her fingers linger as its warmth sinks into them.

“I came because... I am quickly running out of places to come back to.” Villanelle shrugs again, pops the usual careless smile into place as she faces Eve. 

Eve wants to say something but she doesn't know what. All of a sudden, she's felt something. A twinge in her chest. All of the bits of her that have been leaving, one by one, as she burns every bridge in her life, have reduced her heart to something shapeless and jagged. And then Villanelle says it so casually, the thought that is lodged deep in that misshapen mass, and it's like... Something fits. Something still fits.

“Cool flat,” Villanelle carries on, sounding entirely detached from the sentiment. She examines the crappy TV and the old furniture. “Did you move because of me?”

The jarring sensation of belonging is blown away with Villanelle's words, pushing Eve back into the defensive. She stammers something, straightens up in her chair, but somehow the simple “yes” feels like it would leave her lips charged with all kinds of meanings she didn't intend.

Villanelle's head tilts, but she doesn't sit up. “Because you wished I was there?”

No.

But also yes. A little bit.

Eve has been avoiding processing it since then, and now she is even less capable of it. But she did kiss Villanelle, so it's not like it's a complete secret.

The kiss was a maneuver, but it also wasn't a maneuver. It was also just a kiss.

And now her husband is dead, and she still can't feel anything.

“I should be scared of you.”

“You are!” Villanelle exclaims, sounding amusingly supportive. She nods towards the corridor, towards where Eve almost ran away but in truth only lingered. “No, really, you do a great job of being scared. You're a natural,” she adds with a quirk of her brows and an encouraging smile and it makes Eve want to laugh again.

She isn't scared.

“So,” Villanelle carries on, dragging out the syllable, “who is that man who lives here?”

Oh. Jaime.

“Is he alright?”

Villanelle shrugs. “I don't know, he was gone when I got here.” She could be lying just as easily as she could be telling the truth, and a feeling of dread begins to pool in Eve's stomach because  _ oh God, please not again, please don't let me kill another one _ , and it's like Villanelle knows. She softens. She smirks again, but it's smaller, like she's asking for permission to be amused. “He got a very important business call, had to travel to Manchester urgently.”

She nearly bowls over with relief. She's giddy with it, her face slips into a smile. “Oh yeah? What was the business?”

“How should I know?” Villanelle's attempt at innocence holds for a few seconds, then disappears as she covers it up with careful nonchalance. “So, who is he?  _ Boyfriend _ ?” she suggests in a playful tone, eyebrows waggling along.

“No, not... I'm not even sure he's a friend.”

“Good.”

“Why? Because you'd kill him otherwise?” It's meant to sound playful too, but it doesn't, because alluding to murder around Villanelle never does sound quite innocuous. It lands like a very bad joke, like a swear at just the moment that a noisy room goes silent, so that it rings on and on for what feels like an eternity, as everyone stares.

That's what it feels like, looking at Villanelle. She doesn't laugh, or roll her eyes, or even come out and confirm it. She just studies Eve, and she looks vaguely... hurt. And slowly, all the amusement in her eyes goes away deep inside, to whichever corner she keeps it in, and she looks empty and cold and hurt, but Eve senses somehow, through some unexpected intuition, that she isn't quite hurt at  _ her _ .

“Because I'm tired of throwing all my love at people who don't want me.”

Eve wonders what happened. Why Villanelle is here. The banter distracted her, like it always does, but suddenly she is back in the present, in the dark living room with a curled-up Villanelle looking small and lonely, and Eve wonders who hurt her. Eve wonders if she hurt them back. 

Some part of her hopes she did. 

“Niko's dead. He's been murdered.” 

“It wasn't me,” Villanelle says, before anything else. It shouldn't tug at Eve's heart, that she feels the need to say it. After all, she's a murderer. It could very easily have been her. But she looks so small, even smaller as she says it.

“I know.”

“You know?” she repeats with a hint of wonder. 

“Yeah. I know how you operate. This wasn't nearly cool enough.” Villanelle laughs. “Whoever did it tried to frame you, though. You should look into that.”

“Figures,” Villanelle comments neutrally, barely reacting. She chews on her lip, as if lost in her own thoughts, then looks up at Eve. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

It's the silence that pushes Eve to say it, the silence has always been her biggest enemy. It pulls things out of her that would otherwise have remained happily buried forever. But she just can't bear sitting there, in silence, because until the words are out in the world, they are just echoing again and again inside her head.

“I can't feel anything.” It sounds so dramatic. It sounds so much like Villanelle. Except Eve isn't bored, she's more... tired. Yeah, tired. All the time. “I guess it hasn't sunk in yet.”

“Grief can be very complex,” Villanelle comments wisely, nodding at Eve as if ready to begin counseling her in coping techniques. It's impressive how easily she can make Eve laugh, maybe even worrying, that Eve's sense of humor matches so well with a psychopath's.

“I feel like it gets weaker with each one. I feel less and less. I thought it would be different with Niko, but...” She trails off, mostly because she doesn't really want to know where that sentence was going. “Was it like that with you? Did you feel something when you started and it just... went away? You got used to it?”

“Not really.” Of course not. That's not how it works. You don't build up a fundamental lack of empathy. It's just there – or...  _ isn't _ there – from the start. “I never felt things. And I still feel things.” Villanelle pauses, blinks, like she's wondering how else she could put the paradoxical sentiment into words.

“You feel things when you're with me?” Eve suggests, although she knows it's a risky road to walk down.

“I feel...” It's an interesting image: Villanelle frozen in thought. Unsure. “You said I wasn't capable of love. Do you remember?”

“I do.”  _ It was when you shot me _ , Eve doesn't add, because it still doesn't feel quite safe to mention.

“Well, you're wrong. I  _ am _ capable of it. I know I am.” Her forehead has creased a little, between her eyebrows, and that's when Eve realizes how well her eyes have adapted to the darkness by now. She has no idea how long they've been here, just talking. “Because if I didn't love people, it wouldn't hurt so much. They wouldn't be able to hurt me.”

She looks angry, wounded in that defiant way of hers. Like she's daring anything to get in, past the defenses she's set up all around her heart. In these moments, it's hard to remember what she is.

A fragile psychopath is a dangerous psychopath, Eve reminds herself. They are at their most unpredictable when they are at their most vulnerable. So Eve should be scared, but she isn't scared, and she's scared of how little fear she can muster up for the woman in front of her. 

Villanelle is upset, and everything else seems to fly out of the window, just for a moment, just for a flash.

“Villanelle, what happened?”

“My wife was murdered.” Just like that, the moment is gone and Villanelle is being a dick, so things are once again right with the world. She looks thoughtful as she ponders her terrible joke at the expense of Eve's terrible life. “Well, she might have been. I haven't seen her in a while.”

“You actually have a- You know what, don't. Can you just... not be an asshole right now?”

“But you like it when I'm an asshole,” Villanelle claims, all stretched out palms and innocent eyes. 

“No, I don't!” The protest feels too vehement, maybe just because Villanelle receives it with skeptical brows.

“Then what  _ do _ you like?”

“I like...”  _ I like it when you leave me alone. _ A lie.  _ I like it when you don't break into my house. _ Another lie.  _ I like it when you're predictable.  _ Yeah, that is... Eve doesn't think she could even attempt that one.

“I like it when you're honest with me.”

A pause, then Villanelle lets out an inelegant snort. “Eve,” she begins, as if trying to bring her to reason. Her face is contorted into that expression she makes, when someone says something reasonable that she somehow finds completely nonsensical. “You must not like me very much then.”

“You've been honest with me before.”

Villanelle ponders the issue, then her face lights up. “When I told you I masturbated about you a lot! I really did.” She nods to herself as Eve watches her blankly. “I still do,” she adds politely.

“Not like that. Actual honesty-”

“Eve, I tricked you into killing a guy with an axe.” Villanelle sighs, deeply, like Eve is being purposefully obtuse. “Our relationship is not exactly built on honesty.”

“It doesn't have to-”

“And when I  _ do _ tell the truth, you won't believe me.” Eve opens her mouth to protest yet again, but this time she can't even make a sound before she's cut off. “When I told you you make me feel things, when I told you I love you. You told yourself it was all fake, because that's what you really want. You want me to lie, you want my feelings to be lies. Because maybe then you can pretend that yours are too. That I'm so good at faking it that I've tricked you into caring about me.”

She's still lying on the sofa. It's so weird to hear such a speech from someone who's just curled up on a little two-seater that wouldn't fit her outstretched legs. Doubly so when it's Villanelle. Eve focuses on that for a little bit, because every second that she does, she isn't focusing on the actual words.

“That's not true.”

Villanelle's smile is immediate and annoyingly ironic. Yes, Eve has noticed it too. That she's just done it again.

“God, why are you like this?” she explodes, catching herself completely by surprise. Why is it upsetting her so much? Why does she even care?

“It seems to me like you are the complicated-”

“No, not that. Not the  _ thing _ about honesty and lying, I'm honestly too tired to think about all that shit. You.” She points at Villanelle, which is a bit rude, but she's in the presence of the master of rude, so she might as well keep up. “Why are you like this? Why are you sad?”

“I am not sad,” is the instant retort, of course. “And you are not being very tactful.” She leans forward a bit, brows furrowing conspiratorially. “You can't just ask someone why they feel sad, I have come to learn. They might start crying.” She grimaces at that, and Eve resists the temptation to slap that stupid, smug, impossibly expressive face.

“Are you going to start crying?” she asks instead. Villanelle scoffs. “Then I guess I'm safe.”

Villanelle gazes off to Eve's right, looking vaguely offended. Probably just acting it out, but sometimes it's hard to tell. “Are you going to believe me if I tell you?”

“Depends on what you say.”

“Then I might as well lie.”

Villanelle is exasperating. Sometimes Eve forgets, because she's also terrifying, and exhilarating, and impressive, and awe-inspiring. But sometimes, damn, does Eve remember. 

“Okay, forget it.”

“It doesn't matter why I'm sad,” Villanelle starts up at once, barely letting Eve finish her sentence. “I took care of it.”

“Then why are you still sad?”

“Did I distract you?” Villanelle finally sits up. She's been lying down for so long that it feels strange for her to be otherwise. Ominous. “From your grief.”

Niko. Eve remembers, not that she ever forgot, but she remembers with all of herself, instead of just the bit of her mind that has been lingering on it since it happened. She approaches the sore spot gently, tenderly, and presses at the center of the hurt. 

Nothing. Nothing at all.

“Yeah, you did.”

“Has it sunk in yet?” Villanelle's smile is genuine. Looks genuine. Might be genuine. She looks at Eve like she wants nothing more than to fix it all, to retie all the parts of her that have come loose. And Eve has no idea whether she means it.

She shakes her head, then keeps her eyes fixed on the open door, the corridor beyond it. 

“The place where you shot me. The scar. The skin got patched up, but everything in there, and all the way down, it didn't heal the same. Scar tissue doesn't feel the same as the regular stuff.” Villanelle's hand drifts to just above her waist, fingers brushing against something underneath the fabric. Eve can imagine what. “When I touch it, I don't feel anything at all. Maybe it's like that with Niko, too. Maybe the things that hurt us the most are the things that we feel the least.”

Villanelle sits silently for a long time. Her gaze has locked with Eve's and she looks at her, deeply, unceasing, and it's as unreadable as ever but in a different way. Not blank and guarded. Human. Human and confused.

“I am going to tell you something that is true. And you can believe it, or not. But it's true.” Villanelle's voice is weak, almost trembling. Her hand is still over her scar. Eve nods, because she feels like she should react in some way.

“Everybody betrays me. Everybody. Sooner or later, they choose someone else, or themselves, and they trade me in. So I wanted to find my family. The people who would always choose me first. And I did. And they didn't choose me.” She leans forward, not even seeming to notice it, but Eve definitely notices it. Under Villanelle's smoldering gaze, she feels every emotion alongside her. She feels ripped apart. She feels like exactly what she is: empathizing with a psychopath, feeling for a psychopath, all the things that Villanelle wouldn't feel for her if their roles were reversed. 

She just wouldn't. Would she?

“And on my way back I thought, what if there just isn't a family for me? What if people like me don't get that? What if I'm doomed to betrayal and heartbreak? No family to count on, no home to come back to.” She blinks. Eve honestly can't remember the last time she blinked. It almost startles her. 

“And now here is the bit that you won't want to believe. But I'm going to say it anyway.” She takes a deep breath, like she's nervous. Like  _ she's _ nervous. God, Eve could jump out of her skin, even her numb scar suddenly feels itchy. “You make me feel like there's a home for me, somewhere out there. I haven't found it, and it might take a while yet, and it might take some work. But I'm not doomed. And Eve...” 

Villanelle's eyes are deep and endless and she might be going crazy, but suddenly they are so easy to read. Transparent all the way down. Nothing like other people's, nothing at all, but a different language that she's suddenly discovered she can speak fluently. 

“You are not doomed either.”

They are so close now. When did that happen? When did Villanelle's hand move to caress her, when did their foreheads begin brushing together with every breath? When did her heart stutter to life, each beat a pounding drum, sounding the same rhythm inside her mind?

“Don't-” she murmurs in a dying voice. Villanelle moves back just enough to catch her eye, doubt etched in every inch of her face. “Not now. Not when I can't feel anything. Not when I wouldn't...”

She understands. She leans backwards, then gets to her feet. She leaves the house without violence, without surprises, without danger. She just leaves, polite and strangely normal.

Eve sits for a long time, still in the dark. Her fingertips rest on her lips, her heart beats on in her throat. 

She thinks that she lied. That Villanelle was right, as she tends to be, that their relationship isn't quite built on honesty. That, when their lips nearly brushed, the fear inside of her wasn't  _ What if I feel nothing? _

Her heart beats out a steady rhythm, and it isn't the usual in and out, the one-and-two that sounds out Niko's name. Ni. Ko. Ni. Ko. It is a tripping, stuttering sort of pace, a complex one-two-three, like a waltz. 

Vil. La. Nelle. 

Vil. La. Nelle.

And all along, the true question, building inside of her, growing and echoing, because she has nobody to spill out to.  _ What if I do feel? What if this is what makes me feel? _

**Author's Note:**

> Come check me out on twitter @evesaxe ^^


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